I heard footsteps, and turned to see Suze limping into the room. She’d returned to human form, and while I’d been covering the bodies, she must’ve been wrapping up the worst of her slices. She’d put a few butterfly bandages on the cut that had run across her muzzle as a fox—as a human it sliced across her cheek, barely missing her right eye. She was covered in blood, and gave a small groan as she reached down to snag her shirt off the floor where it had fallen when she changed into a fox.
“How are you even walking?” I asked.
“‘Kill me fast or start running like hell’ is practically our motto,” she said, wincing as she eased herself down onto the sofa. “I heal faster than you, vampire boy, or at least faster than you will for another few decades, so after you helped keep me from bleeding out, it was just a matter of waiting for the worst of things to knit together enough that I could grit my way through it.” She started to tug her shirt on, but even with excessive care she almost immediately made a wrong movement and made a half-smothered scream of pain. She paused, panted, then said, “Though I might be taking it easy for a few days. Slacking back, eating ice cream, watching reality TV. Doing some laurel resting while this heals up.”
I looked down at the bodies at my feet. “What are we going to do about this, Suze?”
She ignored what I’d really meant. “I can’t disguise this many bodies, even if I hadn’t been devoting so much energy to healing.” She dropped her shirt onto her lap. “Fuck that, I’m just going to ride home fox. You can throw some towels down on the seats.” She gestured broadly at the house. “We’ll disable all the fire alarms and burn the place to the ground. If we siphon some gas from the tanks of their cars, we can get things cranking and make sure that there’s almost nothing left for anyone to examine. We’ll throw the cars in the garage, let the fire take them as well. I can set enough of a fox trick that everyone who comes to investigate this will agree that the fire started naturally—probably an electrical fire, and that it started when whoever was in the house was asleep. Enough smoke inhalation, fire spreading too fast, and no one got out.” She nodded grimly. “That’s what we’ll have to do.”
“Suze, that’s not—” The sudden sound of a phone ringing cut me off. It was loud—definitely coming from this room, but it wasn’t my phone or Suze’s. I looked around, then recoiled in disgust. It was coming from the remains of the skinwalker’s human flesh—the phone had been in his pants pocket, and had ended up among that twisted wreckage of nasty rotting meat. Suze’s discarded socks were lying near it, and I tugged one of those over my hand and poked cautiously among the pile until I pulled out the phone.
“What are you doing?” Suze watched me from the sofa.
“Have you wondered,” I asked slowly, scrolling down through the list of recent calls received, “how the skinwalker knew how to come here? The succubi changed the plates on their van more than a dozen times, and were using nothing but cash so that they wouldn’t leave a trail. So how did the skinwalker find them? How did it enter Scott territory and go to the one house where its quarry was?” I saw the number on the skinwalker’s phone, and my heart sank. I looked up at Suze. “He was invited, and told exactly where to go.”
She stared at me, comprehension dawning, but I had to say the words myself. “I wasn’t the only one who was frustrated with the stagnation of things that had to be dealt with,” I said. “Prudence was angry. And she moved faster than I did—she got this skinwalker’s phone number—who even knows how—and she called him so that he would come here and kill all the succubi and remove a point of discussion from our list.” For a moment I felt light-headed and wondered if I was going to pass out, whether from blood and injuries or just the sheer weight of this knowledge, crumpling down like a Southern debutante in an old movie, but it passed, leaving me still standing with what I knew. I opened my eyes again and focused on Suze. “All these people . . . This can’t happen again, Suze. I can’t let this happen again.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked, very softly.
“Something,” I said. “I’m going to do something.” I looked down at the throw blanket that I’d put over the bodies, at the way that it was slowly wicking up blood and forming stains. “Something big.”
* * *
I arrived at the mansion the next morning, ten minutes after the beginning of our scheduled meeting. One of the staff members was refreshing the floral arrangement beside the base of the stairs, and I asked her to go get my siblings and to please bring them here, to the main entryway. Her surprise was clear, but she was well trained and did what I asked without question. After all, I was a Scott.
Prudence and Chivalry walked in together, and stopped dead at what they saw. Because I was standing there, of course, but arrayed behind me were Atsuko and all her living daughters and granddaughters, in human and fox forms. And Gil and Dahlia Kivela were there, with a dozen of the metsän kunigas. The ghoul elders were there, along with their strongest members, the ones most ready for a fight. Lilah and Cole stood off to the side with several of the Neighbors, their glamours dropped and their hair gleaming like metal threads, and finally there was Valentine Sassoon and over fifty adult witches.
The kitsune had hidden them all as they came in. Because the kitsune worked at their strongest within expectation, and who would ever have expected to see these groups together, arrayed as one body, filling the whole of the massive entryway of Madeline Scott’s mansion?
My brother recovered first. “Fort,” he asked carefully, “what is this?”
“This is called a coup,” I said, and I looked directly at my sister. “We’re not going to keep doing it the old way anymore.”
Prudence was absolutely cold, rigid and controlled. “And how do you suggest we do it?” She scanned her eyes over everyone in the room, her expression promising death. “What promises have you made, baby brother?” she hissed.
“Everyone has a seat at the table now.” I nodded behind me, indicating those who stood there. “We all live in this territory, and we all have a stake in it. Every group will have a representative, and every representative will have a vote.”
Chivalry’s expression was despairing. “You think it’s that simple, Fortitude?”
“No, I know it isn’t. But that’s where we’re starting. We’ll work it out, all of us.” I stared at my family, and the heat of my anger and rage was just as strong as it had been the previous day, when I saw Prudence’s number on the skinwalker’s phone. “We live in America, and it’s time for a motherfucking democracy.”
My sister stepped forward, and she wasn’t cold now—her eyes were glowing, and an unholy rage was almost rolling off her. “This country won its democracy through blood, brother. I remember—I was there to see it. How much will your little group sacrifice for this? How much blood will they shed?” Her fangs slid out, white and sharp.
Everyone around me tensed, but no one ran as she moved closer to us. I drew my sawed-off Ithaca and sighted down on my sister, bracing myself to pull the trigger and shoot her.
For a long minute, I don’t think anyone in the room breathed, as everything hung by a thread.
It was Chivalry who suddenly reached out and caught Prudence’s arm, keeping her from taking that one final step that would’ve sent violence exploding throughout the room.
“Stop, sister,” he said.
“Even you, Chivalry?” she asked, shocked.
“Yes.” He nodded, but there was a world of sadness in his voice. “If a side must be chosen, here and now, then I choose to follow Fortitude’s path rather than to fight him.”
“Even if that means fighting me?” She reached over to touch where his hand was holding her, and her grip tightened, making his jaw clench with pain, but he didn’t waver, just held her gaze and refused to look away. Something passed between them—and it was Prudence who looked away, and who stepped back.
“Very well, broth
er,” she said, so low that I wasn’t sure how many in the room could even hear her. “Since you have at last made a decision, I will agree. Two votes to one, after all.” She looked around the room once more, disgust curling her lip. “Though perhaps the staircase remains our best moment of unity.”
* * *
The race factions all filed into the dining room for the first official discussion. Staff members hurried among them, making certain that everyone had chairs and glasses of water. Loren Noka had dug out a stenographer’s typewriter, and was setting it up so there would be an official record of all statements made, though I noticed that she’d also downloaded a recording app to her phone to augment it.
Chivalry stood beside me, watching silently. Finally, as the last entered the room, and they waited for us to join them—not as their rulers now, but as the last of the voting factions, my brother turned to me and asked, “Do you understand what you’ve begun, brother?”
“Something better, I hope.” I answered.
“Hope,” Chivalry said, disgusted, and shook his head. “This wasn’t what Mother wanted. She foresaw problems coming and wanted us to share control between the three of us, and she must’ve wanted that for a reason.” Urgently he whispered, “We’re moving off her path, Fort, and into the wilderness. And without knowing what she knew.”
“There’s no real vision into the future, Chivalry,” I insisted. “The future is what we make it.”
My sister joined us, and gave a slow nod at my statement. “Indeed, brother.” Her blue eyes glowed. “The future will continue to come, no matter what you do. You make this deal today, with these individuals who you seem to trust so much. But remember that you’ll be dealing with their children someday. And then their grandchildren after that. And their great-grandchildren. You’re not even thirty yet, Fortitude. You don’t understand that we—your family—are all that will stand with you against the wave of time, as all others get crushed into the sand.”
I could feel my mouth twist. “That’s why you let Chivalry stop you. Because you think that I’ll change my mind.”
“I have time, baby brother,” she answered. “Centuries of it, and enough to have learned the true value of patience.”
“Time goes both ways, Prudence,” I reminded her. “Now, I’m going to go make a future that I’d like to live in, whether you like it or not.”
I entered the room, hearing the footsteps of my siblings as they followed me. All the eyes were on me, but the ones that I met belonged to a small black fox, swathed in vet wrap bandages and held in the arms of one of her cousins. She wagged her tail at me and yipped, just once.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
M. L. Brennan lives in Connecticut with her husband and an assortment of extremely spoiled cats. Holding a master’s degree in fiction, she teaches basic composition to college students. Her house is more than a hundred years old, and is insulated mainly by overstuffed bookshelves.
CONNECT ONLINE
mlbrennan.com
@brennanml
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